2012 National Book Award Finalist,
Nonfiction

Robert A. Caro

The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 4

Knopf

citation

Robert Caro has come to define literary mastery. Through meticulous and nearly microscopic reporting, he reveals how power intersects with personality to create the texture of American political life. His storytelling is lyrical and vivid. His voice is exquisitely intimate and at the same time as authoritative and imposing as his subjects. His portrait of Lyndon Johnson is the great American story.

About the Book

The fourth installment in Robert Caro’s monumental work on President Lyndon Johnson, The Passage of Power follows Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career: 1958 to 1964. For the first time, we see the Kennedy assassination through Johnson’s eyes. We watch Johnson step into the presidency, inheriting a staff fiercely loyal to his slain predecessor, a Congress determined to retain its power over the executive branch, and a nation in shock and mourning. This is not only the story of how he surmounted unprecedented obstacles in order to fulfill the highest purpose of the presidency but is also a revelation of what can be accomplished when the chief executive has the vision and determination to move beyond the pragmatic and initiate programs designed to transform a nation.

About the Author

For his biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, Robert A. Caro has twice won the Pulitzer Prize in Biography, twice won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Best Nonfiction Book of the Year, and has also won virtually every other major literary honor, including the National Book Award, the Gold Medal in Biography, and the Francis Parkman Prize. In 2010, he received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama. Caro graduated from Princeton University and later became a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. He lives in New York City with his wife, Ina.